Inspiration
- Deletion of geocities, etc. Archive team, archive.org: digital amnesia
- Facebook's Petabyte scale long term archival cold-storage optical robot
- RepRap, the self-replicating 3D printer that kickstarted the 3D printing movement
- The immutable ledger or "blockchain" itself is like a burnable DVD-disc, write-once, read-multiple
True cold data storage.
What it does
Decentralized storage system to archive the public internet.
- Finders: anonymous, provide data that they want archived.
Keepers: archive data in long-term storage.
Erasure coding is used to distribute storage in a "holographic" way across the globe
We need at least 3 hacker spaces to build this device, therefore we provide free and openly available plans that anyone can use and improve upon to build this small scale optical cold-storage robot
users submit a URI to a public resource, for instance a youtube clip, and the burners download the movie and write it to disc.
An ethereum smart contract implements some basic game theory and staking mechanism
How I built it
First I build a simulation and test the idea, see http://simulator.laserbot.net
Then we used:
- Debian linux desktop-computer to control DVD drives
- Tahoe-LAFS tools for the erasure coding
- Solidity, web3.js and truffle for the smart-contracts
- A laser-cutter at Noisebridge to cut the parts
- Arduino for the motor control, etc
- NodeJS for the laserbot-daemon (eject cd's, talk to the SC)
Challenges I ran into
- Zero hardware-hacking tools available
- Amazon prime screwed-up, buying an Arduino in SF, lack of Radio Shack :cry:
- Complexity of such a project
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
MOST PROUD: going from zero claps at pitch to getting several people very enthusiastic and actually pulling it off
- Original mixture of hardware, software, blockchain and cryptoeconomics :boom:
- Various implementation details (ask me)
- Getting Noise-Bridge to be the first hackerspace to adopt the device :heart:
- Getting team members inspired
- Getting the project 80% off the ground: from hardware to the cryptoeconomics tought out
What I learned
Manufacturing a project like this in X hours would be entirely impossible 20 years ago: with tools like laser printers and ethereum.
You need to be in a hackerspace and iterate over the mechanics.
What's next for Laserbot
- Redo the mechanics
- Finish the smartcontracts and deploy
- Move it to Noisebridge and get at least 2-other hackers spaces to build it
- Archive the Internet!
Staying in SF for a week and finish the machine @ Noisebridge
Try it out
Visit https://laserbot.net
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